Becky Teaser works out with personal trainer Tim Rickett at the Fort Collins Club, where they are members of the Power Pac weight-lifting team. "I didn't realize how strong I was," says Teaser. "Women worry about getting big, but they shouldn't. It's addicting."

“There’s this guy at the club who just set a national bench-press record,” my husband tells me. I nod, show the proper amount of wifely interest, and the conversation turns to other topics.

A year or so later, he says “Remember that guy who set that weightlifting record? He set another one — and he has pancreatic cancer.”

Now I’m paying attention. My dad died of pancreatic cancer in 1991, the day after his 57th birthday. He didn’t set any weight records. He didn’t even have chemotherapy. He actually died of a heart attack in the hospital before they had figured out what was making him sick. The diagnosis came with the autopsy.

In the 20 years since our family first learned about the cruel quickness of this disease, the odds of surviving have not improved much: 94 percent of pancreatic cancer patients will die within five years of diagnosis, and three-quarters of patients die within the first year of diagnosis.

Weightlifter Tim Rickett, 47, has beaten those odds, repeatedly. Since his pancreatic cancer diagnosis in 2002, the personal trainer has set survival records along with bench-press, squat and dead-lift records.

As the fitness director and head personal trainer for the Fort Collins Club, Rickett spends most of his work days in the weight room, and on Saturday mornings, that’s where you’ll find him, working out with the Power Pac. The crew of drug-free amateur lifters has been working out together for 23 years.

“Back in the day, I was able to squat 497, dead-lift 505 and bench 458 pounds. Now that I’m skinny and old — not as much,” says Rickett, who three weeks ago set a world record for the Masters 165-pound class raw bench press at 308 pounds. “I got older because I’m lucky, and I got skinny because of the cancer.”

And that cancer has spread, he learned the day after setting this most recent record. Throughout his cancer fight, Rickett has flown to the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for quarterly checkups. He had an appointment the day after the competition, so he missed the awards ceremony to catch a flight and hear the news that his doctors are “getting close to the end of our book of tricks,” says Rickett. He has taken just about every possible chemotherapy combination since the cancer reappeared in his liver after surgery in 2004.

“Hearing that diagnosis, I can’t tell you how gut-wrenching that is. It makes me real mad, but lifting weights helps,” says Rickett. “Then, you’re not a cancer guy, you’re a lifter.”

Inspiration for lifting team

Fellow lifter Charlie Doggett, 77, says Rickett inspires the whole Power Pac team, five women and eight men who spend Saturday mornings working out together and teasing each other.

“In Tim’s case, chemo could be argued as a performance-enhacing drug,” says Jason Luna, 40. His wife, Melissa Luna, 41, credits Rickett with helping her lose 4 inches from her hips and three from her waist when cardio wasn’t enough. “I’ve learned perseverance, when I get tired, I think of Tim,” she says. Luna credits weightlifting for keeping her strong as she dealt with thyroid problems.

The team will travel to Las Vegas in July for a competition and plans to attend a meet in Loveland in August.

“Keep your calendar full,” is just one of Rickett’s practical tips for living with cancer. “If you’ve got something to do tomorrow, you’ve gotta wake up.”

His low-key approach belies the life-and-death issues cancer patients face. “The major thing that I tell people is, ‘You have to eat, and you have to move.’ You get sick to your stomach, and it’s a tiredness that you can’t explain, but if you don’t move, you’re going to become more tired.”

Instead of curling into the fetal position, Rickett gets on the treadmill. He’s been known to walk for hours, keeping his mind off the nausea that comes with chemotherapy.

Now that his chemo options have tapped out, Rickett will travel to Holland for treatment with Lu-177, a radioactive isotope that tricks the cancer into consuming itself.

The Fort Collins Club is hosting a pool party to help the Ricketts (his wife, Julie, is an English teacher, and they have a 14-year-old daughter) raise funds for his next phase of treatment. (The party starts at 6 p.m. June 25, and includes cocktails, a barbecue and a silent auction. Tickets are $100, and all of the money will go to the Rickett family. Call 970-224-2582 for reservations.)

“I’m one of the luckiest people alive, being in that club, having relationships with so many people,” says Rickett as he attempts to explain what keeps him going. “And not just the club, the whole city of Fort Collins, hearing from prayer groups all over the U.S. — it makes you feel so good, it’s like having more therapy every time someone says ‘I’m praying for you’ or ‘I’m thinking about you.’ “

By the numbers

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in the United States.

• In 2010, an estimated 43,140 people were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the United States, and approximately 36,800 died from the disease.

• Pancreatic cancer has the lowest survival rate of any major cancers: 94 percent of patients will die within five years.

• The average life expectancy after diagnosis with metastatic disease is three to six months.

• Pancreatic cancer may cause only vague symptoms that could indicate many different conditions. Symptoms include pain (usually abdominal or back pain), weight loss, jaundice, loss of appetite, nausea, changes in stool and diabetes.

• Pancreatic cancer is a leading cause of cancer death largely because there are no detection tools to diagnose the disease in its early stages when surgical removal of the tumor is still possible.

• The National Cancer Institute spent an estimated $89.4 million on pancreatic cancer research in 2009. This represented 2 percent of the federal government’s $5 billion cancer-research budget.

More heavy lifting required

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network is stepping up its lobbying efforts to increase federal funding for pancreatic cancer research.

National call-in day tomorrow: PanCan is asking supporters to call their representative and senators in Washington to make pancreatic cancer research a national priority and support the Pancreatic Cancer Research & Education Act. Want to know more? Contact the network’s government affairs and advocacy department at advocacy@pancan.org or 202-742-6699.

Eight volunteers from Colorado will join 600 others in Washington today for Advocacy Day. The National Cancer Institute spent an estimated $89.4 million on pancreatic cancer research in 2009, about two percent of the federal institute’s $5 billion cancer research budget.

Loveland resident Kara Friedrich, 46, lost her dad to pancreatic cancer in 2003. He was the third in her family to die from the disease, and she knows she’s at risk, too.

“There’s nothing I could do today to be screened to say, ‘You have this marker.’ It is frustrating. I have three kids in their 20s, and the likelihood of it affecting me and them is very real,” says Friedrich, who is the coordinator for the Denver PanCan affiliate, fulfilling a promise to her dad that she would work toward early detection.

“Even when people do have some early symptoms and they go to the doctor, they’re sent home with ‘nothing to worry about’ — we’d like some of those dollars to go into education so that doctors are aware,” Friedrich says.

More in News

The Fitzsimons Golf Course may, after 20 years of rumors, be closing at the end of this year to make way for bioscience master plans. As staff and regulars await a final date, they reminisce on the course’s nearly 100 years of history.